On Saturday, October 20, 2018, five Chicago-based architects selected items from the Ryerson & Burnham Archives located within the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the second edition of our Tracing / Traces event. Participants discussed their selections in relationship to their practice. Participants in the event included:

Paola Aguirre discussed several public schools built in Chicago during the 1960s and early 1970s, from the design of the buildings to the ambitions of the architects to create educational buildings that serve as community anchors. Building upon her work at Overton Elementary School, Aguirre selected schools across Chicago designed by Perkins+Will, Bertrand Goldberg Associates, Harry Weese & Associates, McPherson, Swing & Associates, and Loebl, Schlossman and Bennett.

Sarah Dunn selected three items from the Late Entries to the Chicago Tribune Competition Collection. Two of the items were photographs of two of the three proposals submitted by Miami-based architecture office Arquitectonica founded in 1977. The office gained early fame for their Atlantis Condominium, popularized in the opening credits of Miami Vice. The first proposal, Untitled, was submitted by Bernard Fort-Breccia and Laurinda Spear. The second proposal, titled 1980 Chi Trib Comp(Glass-Clad Obelisk), was submitted by Hervin Romney. The third entry, Untitled, was the proposal submitted by Italian architect, urban planner, and industrial designer Gaetano Pesce (from the Late Entries to the Chicago Tribune Competition Collection, 1980).

Grant Gibson selected three drawings of the first (unbuilt) scheme of the 1952 John Garvey Residence in Urbana, Illinois, designed by Bruce Goff (1904–1982). The client, John Garvey (1921–2006), was a violinist and taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until his retirement in 1991. The three illustrations, done by renderer Herb Green, showed two plans and a section of the first scheme. Gibson placed the house in the lineage of two other Bruce Goff homes: the 1949 Ford House in Aurora, Illinois, and the 1955 Bavinger House in Norman, Oklahoma (now demolished). After this scheme was considered too wild and expensive, Goff designed a second scheme that was ultimately built in 1955 (from the Bruce A. Goff Archive).

Garvey, John, Residence (1952), Drawing, Plan. First of two designs. Goff, Bruce A., Archive, 1893-2003 (bulk 1920s-1980s). Courtesy of the Ryerson and Burnham Archives at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Garvey, John, Residence (1952), Drawing, Plan. First of two designs. Goff, Bruce A., Archive, 1893-2003 (bulk 1920s-1980s). Courtesy of the Ryerson and Burnham Archives at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Geoff Goldberg selected several items related to his continued interests in mid-century modernism. He found a rare construction paper and design rationale from 1964 of Marina City’s theater building designed by Bertrand Goldberg & Associates, as well as a copy of Bertrand Goldberg’s design for an invitation to the 1933 Bauhaus Ball; photographs of architect Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe (1886-1969) and Charles “Skip” Genther (1907-1987) on the construction site of 860-880 North Lake Shore Drive Apartments c. 1948. Genther had co-founded PACE Associates, and did the working drawings for Mies’ buildings; also shown was an extremely rare paper by structural engineer Frank J. Kornacker titled “The Frame and Floor Structure in Multi-Story Building” c. 1955 (from the PACE Associates Records); writings, slides, film, and recordings by photographer Arthur Siegel (1913-1978) who studied at the New Bauhaus with László Moholy-Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes. Also included were Siegel’s notebooks from teaching at Harvard University (1967-1968), and Black Mountain College correspondence.

Finally, Ellen Grimes selected a series of photographs by Richard Nickel taken during the documentation and removal of ornamental pieces from soon-to-be demolished buildings such as the Garrick Theater as well as during the Stencil Recovery Project (1961-1967). The photographs depict David Norris and John Vinci, then architecture students, during these efforts. Richard Nickel met John Vinci in 1958 when Vinci was 21 years old (from the Richard Nickel Archive).

David Norris and John Vinci removing a section of plaster of the Garrick Theater; the building was demolished 1961. Courtesy of the Ryerson & Burnham Archives at the Art Institute of Chicago.

John Vinci lying on top of a fragment of ornament from the cornice of the Garrick Theater; the building was demolished 1961. Courtesy of the Ryerson & Burnham Archives at the Art Institute of Chicago.

John Vinci and David Norris with a stencil pattern during the Stencil Recovery Project (1961-1967); image may be from stencil projects for either the Schiller or Auditorium Buildings, Richard Nickel Archive. Courtesy of the Ryerson & Burnham Archives at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Part of the proscenium arch of the Auditorium Building, John Vinci working on a stencil recovery project, Richard Nickel Archive. Courtesy of the Ryerson & Burnham Archives at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Exterior ornament detail on Carson, Pirie, Scott & Company building showing a cleaned section of ornament with original historic paint color samples applied (in stages with a red/brown base and olive green top coat and then swiped to allow the red color to show though as highlights) and recreated for approval. John Vinci stands next to the panel., Richard Nickel Archive. Courtesy of the Ryerson & Burnham Archives at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Thank you very much to Nathaniel Parks, Tigerman McCurry Art and Architecture Archivist at the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries, for his help in organizing and displaying the selected items as well as his generosity providing access to the archives.

About the Ryerson & Burnham Archives

The Ryerson & Burnham Archives’ collections are notably strong in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century American architecture, with particular depth in midwestern architecture. Architects such as Edward Bennett, Daniel Burnham, Bruce Goff, Bertrand Goldberg, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Mies van der Rohe, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright are represented in a broad range of papers. Major architectural events, such as the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, The Century of Progress International Exposition of 1933–1934 in Chicago, and the World’s Fair of 1939 in New York, are also represented in an individual archive.